text: ‘Y’all’ is the Southern American way of saying ‘you all’ or ‘you guys’ and is a much-loved word. It’s charming, useful and down to earth and therefore very American, but controversy has been welling up over a number of decades over its use in the singular. One language expert has described this debate as ‘the Loch Ness Monster of dialect studies’, because examples of it being used in this way are so few and far between. ‘Y’all’ is the Southern American way of saying ‘you all’ or ‘you guys’ and is a much-loved word . Arkia Okrent, author of In The Land Of Invented Language, writing in The Week, argues that most Southerners will firmly deny that they ever use y’all to mean the singular ‘you’. She said: ‘The whole idea of singular "y'all" strikes them as, at best, the fanciful invention of confused and clueless Northerners, and, at worst, an outrageous insult.’ To underline this point she quotes linguist E. Bagby Atwood, who in his 1962 study of Texas English, wrote: ‘If anything is likely to lead to another Civil War, it is the Northerner's accusation that Southerners use you all to refer to only one person.’ Some wrongly think that when Southerners ask a shop keeper, for example, whether ‘y’all got some eggs?’ they are using the word in the singular, when actually they mean ‘do you or any of your colleagues have any eggs?’, Okrent writes. Sensitive: One writer declared that ‘if anything is likely to lead to another Civil War, it is the Northerner's accusation that Southerners use you all to refer to only one person'. Pictured is a steam boat on the  Mississippi, in the heart of Southern America . However, she said that there are instances of y’all been used as a form of singular address by Southerners, for example a waitress asking a lone customer ‘how are y'all's grits?’. The explanation may be rooted in social pressures, though – as it may be deployed in the above circumstance as a mark of deference, Okrent said, to establish an atmosphere of gentle decorum where simply saying ‘your’ might seem a little abrupt. It is also used by Southerners to reinforce their identity, she claims. So sometimes they use it in the singular when they’re travelling in other parts of the country or feel themselves outnumbered by Northerners in their own community. A study by Jan Tillery and Guy Bailey found that many Southerners exaggerate their use of the phrase, and use it in ways that might not be strictly correct, to turn it into a ‘badge of identity’. Okrent said: ‘Northerners… have been hearing singular "y'all" all along. They just didn't realize it was not part of Southern English, but a different dialect, Exaggerated Southern English.’